Does anyone have experience with this kit? I'm about to freshen a couple 496s and was going to make the switch to forged pistons and saw these kits: http://www.raylarengineering.com/forged-pistons.html

Lots of people on both the marine and street side have replaced their stock 496 bottom ends with our stroker kits. The 511cid 4.5 inch stroke kit is a direct replacement for the stock assembly, no clearance work required. For the supercharged guys, the forged bottom end assembly is more than happy to take boost!

Semi related, our shop truck (2003 Suburban) has been driven daily for the last year and a half with our 540cid street stroker kit (4.75inch stroke). You'd be surprised how light you can make a 6000lb truck feel with one of these kits! Here's a video of the truck back when it had a set of ported iron heads on it, we've added aluminum heads since then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfu_c3XlAog We've actually just added the 511 stroker kit to our marine page - http://www.raylarengineering.com/496...nce-parts.html

nobody? would feel better hearing from some actual users

With GM not using it in the trucks any longer
and Mercury not using the 496 anymore
since they went back to the 502
less people are messing with the 496s..
Pretty sure Raylar is the only expert in this field..

any gen 5-6 crank will go in the gen 7 engine. Another one people did was put the gen 7 crank in a 502. Actually the gen 7 bottom end is clearanced better than any other block for handling stroke. So it isn't like raylar is putting together some jury rig that isn't gonna hold up. And much like bob m. Or glassdave, ray knows what he is doing. If something blows up in a customer's face, it blows up in ray's face too.